Poland backs down on Holocaust law and moves to end jail terms

WarSaW: Polish lawmakers voted to water down a Holocaust law that angered the United States and Israel, and remove parts that imposed jail terms on people who suggest the nation was complicit in Nazi crimes.

The lower house of parliament backed the changes in an emergency session hours after Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki asked it to amend the four-month-old law. An upper house vote is expected later.

The unexpected U-turn came as the ruling nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) seeks to bolster security ties with Washington and faces heightened scrutiny from the EU.

It also came the morning after Poland’s state-run company PGNiG said it had signed long-term agreements on liquefied natural gas supplies from the United States.

The law as it went into effect in March imposed jail sentences of up to three years for anyone who used the phrase “Polish death camps” or suggested “publicly and against the facts” that the Polish nation or state was complicit in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

The nationalist, right-wing government said at the time the law was needed to protect Poland’s reputation. Israel and its ally the United States said it amounted to a historical whitewash.

Morawiecki did not say what precisely had prompted his morning announcement. But he told parliament the terms of the existing law had already done their job by raising awareness of Poland’s role in WWII – the government says Poles were the victims of Nazi aggression, not fellow perpetrators. — Reuters